What could the ruling party, faced with the possibility of losing power in polls, do when it is getting increasingly isolated with allies bidding good bye one after the otherIJ Senior Congress leader from Kerala and Union Minister Vayalar Ravi has a suggestion: Go back to the left and strike a new deal.
Ravi has sparked a heated debate in Kerala’s Congress circles over this possibility with his statement the other day that the Congress should try for an understanding with the left for the coming lok Sabha election. To some leaders like Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, the proposal is absolutely in unthinkable, at least in Kerala.
But Defence Minister AK Antony, the strongest voice of Kerala’s Congress at the AICC, refused to agree with or reject Ravi’s proposal even as he ruled out early elections to the lok Sabha. “I don’t want to create problems during my occasional visits to Kerala by responding to what Ravi and Chandy said,” he said in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday.
“In my opinion, there is nothing wrong in cooperating with the leftists (in the lok Sabha polls) especially as there is not much difference in their thinking and ours. People like me are interested in reaching an understanding with the leftists,” Ravi told newsmen in Kottayam the other day, to be ridiculed instantaneously by the leftist circles.
Chandy, who is heading a Government that is surviving on a wafer-thin majority by braving the storms unleashed by the Opposition left, raised objections immediately by saying that such a proposal was not welcome in Kerala. Ravi could have been speaking of the national scenario, said Chandy. Interestingly, Ravi quickly agreed with the Chief Minister.
Ravi said that the circumstances in Kerala and West Bengal were not conducive for an alliance between the Congress and the left, obviously due to Chandy’s objections. But leftist leaders said “Ravi should have been joking” because the left itself did not consider a big force outside these two states (apart from its supremacy in seat-wise insignificant Tripura).
Analysts feel that Ravi’s words are reflective of a thinking that should have already started in the top echelons of the Congress party in Delhi in the wake of the DMK’s decision to part ways. “Nobody would be surprised even if Congress admits this. But I think even the left itself is yet to calculate exactly its possibilities in the next lok Sabha,” said a senior journalist.
“Ravi is indeed a senior leader of the Congress party. But I don’t think he has the stature Antony enjoys in the party or he has been authorized to speak things for the high command. The maximum you can expect is that the Congress high command could be trying to assess our mood by letting him make such statements,” said a CPI(M) theorist.
A top State Congress leader, who did not want to be identified, indicated that behind-the-screen discussions in this direction could have started already. “But, you know, the Congress party is not in the habit of announcing alliances before polls. Such things will be taken up as per post-poll possibilities. Ravi was hinting at possibilities too,” he said.
Of the 20 lok Sabha seats in Kerala, 16 are being held by Congress and its allies in the UDF while the remaining four seats are with the CPI(M). Analysts expect this position to be reversed in the next lok Sabha election considering the widely perceived downslide in the popularity graph of the Oommen Chandy Government.